Wayside Take Out in Charlottesville

Wayside Take Out in Charlottesville

One of these days I have to go back and take pictures and do a real write up. But this place is the real deal kind of roadfood place.

Good fried chicken, sweet potato pie, and they serve breakfast, sandwiches and burgers too, but I have only ever had the chicken and pie and some of the sides. They also have fried shrimp and seafood and even liver.

Now they are also serving baked chicken, I guess for the health conscious <eg>

The place has been in business for 40 years, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it if you are in the area. In fact I thought the chicken there was better than Mitchie Tavern's buffet near Monticello

They have a website now, www.waysidechicken.com , they are at 2203 Jefferson Park Avenue sharing a lot with a place on the corner of Fontaine (take I64 to US29 on the west side of Cville to the Fontaine exit)

WARNING - the place is just south of Scott Stadium so avoid game days in football season.

Was driving up 29 from Lynchburg to home Friday so took a very short 1.5 mile detour to stop at Wayside. Didn't have my cam only the cell phone, and since the baby was asleep I didn't dare stop for long. The entrance is a little different, the porch looks new, but inside the porch is the same front entry :) One of the signs on the door notes they are closed from July 4th through July 7th.

Inside is pretty much the same so far as I could tell (I popped in for literally 5 seconds while my wife got the food stowed in the car, trying to get moving in order to keep the baby asleep)

Also I should note that the place shares a parking lot with what is apparently an ice cream/shake place, but I have yet to stop in there. One time soon we will make a trip of it and do he ice cream place too.

Of the 2 small sides I got, the mashed potatoes were forgettable, but the beans were good with a hunk of good bacon or salt pork in them.

We also picked up Chinese takeout from a little convenience store about 1/5 of a mile north on Maury Ave (other side of Fontaine but same side of the road) called Yuan Ho - sorry no pics. The takeout was good, and everything is pretty much one price for each type of meat or vegetarian dishes. They are pretty much strictly takeout, being a convenience store. They too were shutting down for the long weekend over the 4th.

They have a website now, www.waysidechicken.com , they are at 2203 Jefferson Park Avenue sharing a lot with a place on the corner of Fontaine (take I64 to US29 on the west side of Cville to the Fontaine exit)

Both places you stopped sound awesome...and that picture of the chicken is heavenly!

Yes - the Chinese is much spicier than we are accustomed to getting in the Richmond area. Both dishes we tried - the Peking pork and the shrimp my wife got - were spicer than we were used to. Not bad but different.

Of course Cville is a college town and a lot of folks from the north east and elsewhere that have good Chinese, so the bland stuff that passes in Richmond probably wouldn't cut it there - especially at a take out place in a convenience store.

The dumplings and the spring rolls I would say were slightly under-done - not dangerously so but not crisp as usual for the spring rolls, and the dumplings were slightly doughy esp the ones on the bottom. However they were in the middle of shutting down for the a floor cleaning (there was water all over the floor) and we called right at 4 PM (before traiditional dinner time), and I am betting with classes not in session things were slow and they were in shutdown mode . And also - we took them 35 miles to home before we took them out of the bag.

...tips like that above as I now look forward to trying Wayside this Saturday while in C'ville. Thanks, NascarDad!

Yesterday while in Charlottesville, Virginia -- and at Wayside Chicken,

specifically -- I came, I ate, I went and I can attest that this place is:

What a great find! Thanks, NascarDad. The funny thing is, though, I've been going to C'Ville for decades. Asked my Universiy of Virginia alumni friends if they had ever been (they had not which tells me that I really have to get some new friends) and can't believe that I had never been to this place which just defines road food. Scrumptious and delcately breaded fried chicken (and which you could purchase by the piece), fantastic sides (we had the baked beans and potato salad [Disclosure: My 17-year-old also had the gravy-laden mashed potatoes which she said were "fake" and I've long let go of my benchmark that a fried chicken place be measured by its mashed spuds {see: Cindy Dee's in Knoxville, Maryland}), sweet tea, friendly service and two well-worn yet inviting picnic tables out front.Honestly and with this place being less than a mile from the UVA campus, I might just start a petition calling for a recall of certain graduates' degrees and, in place, providing them with an incomplete for not visiting this true culinary landmark.

I made it there again the other weekend. Still good chicken. It tends to be a bit dryer than many places, especially the white meat, but that is OK, I find KFC so overly moist that the thighs are inedible and it all gets mushy pretty quickly.

Wayside, on the other hand was not mushy at all when I got it home. Of course I had to eat some in the car just to make sure I had some at it's best ;)

I just stopped by Wayside a week ago.....I tried the chicken several months ago, but it was take out. I had a few friends attending a class and asked them to pick me up some chicken...I wasn't impressed at all. But thought the 45 minute drive from Charlottesville to Culpeper might have been the problem.

I am having some tattoo work done by a local shop in Charlottesville, and picked up some chicken on my home last week.....I'd rather have Popeyes....was very disappointed.....